Messages
by AbbyYukiko
Summary: Sherlock leaves John messages whenever he has to disappear for a time. John reflects on this fact as he tries to come to terms with losing his best friend. Post The Reichenbach Fall.


_Oh, please, there's just one more thing, right? One more thing. One more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't be dead. _

The words that John had spoken at – he grimaced, unable to even think the words _Sherlock's grave_. The words he had spoken earlier played through his mind, again and again as he wondered aimlessly around London. It was ridiculous, he knew, to ask Sherlock to just _not _be dead. He had seen Sherlock fall from the roof of St. Bart's. There was no surviving something like that.

Despite having told Mrs. Hudson that he wasn't going to return to the flat, he wasn't surprised to find himself at Baker Street during his walk. It was the place he had considered home for so long, after all. It pained him to think of leaving Baker Street, leaving the flat that had started his friendship with Sherlock. But he knew that it would hurt more to stay.

Ignoring his earlier intentions to avoid the place that reminded him most of Sherlock, John let himself into 221 Baker Street, hoping he could avoid Mrs. Hudson and her attempts to comfort him. The flat was unchanged from the last time John had been there. Everything was still where it had been when they had left the flat for the last time before Sherlock's fall. John had slowly removed his possessions from the flat but had been unable to bring himself to even touch Sherlock's. Each trip he made to Baker Street, he told himself he would begin packing up Sherlock's things. Then again, he also told himself on each trip that _this one_ was going to be the last.

Upon seeing the unchanged flat, John sank into Sherlock's chair, his head in his hands. He had been hoping – ridiculously, irrationally hoping – to find _something_ different upon his arrival. He didn't know what he had been hoping for, but then again, he never had known what was coming with Sherlock. The man had surprised him, time and again, by doing thing that John would never have expected.

_The first time that Sherlock had disappeared without telling John anything, the doctor had returned home from work one day to find the flat empty. It wasn't until hours later that he had become curious enough to text Sherlock, merely to find the man's phone amidst a pile of papers on the table. John began to worry when Sherlock still hadn't returned the following morning and a phone call to Lestrade hadn't turned up anything. _

_John was on the verge of filing a missing person's report the following night when Sherlock flounced into the flat, threw himself into his chair and demanded that John make him a cup of tea. It hadn't taken long for the fight to break out._

_'You can't just disappear like that, Sherlock.'_

_'I had a case to solve,' Sherlock responded, not even looking up from the paper he was reading._

_'You could have left a message,' John slammed the kettle onto the counter considerably harder than he had intended to. 'I had no idea what happened to you. I was this close – this close, Sherlock – to reporting you missing.'_

_'Why would you do that?' Sherlock lifted his eyes to meet John's. 'It was obvious that I was fine.'_

_'It might have been bloody obvious to you, but it certainly wasn't to me,' John yelled, despite his best efforts. He held up his hand to forestall Sherlock's response, 'And no, I don't want to know why it should have been so bloody obvious.' _

_Sherlock returned to his paper as John poured them each a mug of tea. He placed Sherlock's on the table next to him, a bit more forcefully that necessary, before sinking into his own chair across from the object of his anger._

_'You still could have left a message, Sherlock,' John returned to the point that Sherlock had chosen to ignore earlier. 'Then at least I would have known you were alright.'_

_'It was too dangerous,' Sherlock responded._

_ 'And taking your mobile with you was too dangerous, too, I take it?'_

_'Obviously.'_

_John drank the rest of his tea in silence, too frustrated with Sherlock to continue that conversation and too angry with him to talk about anything else. He knew that anything he said would go straight over Sherlock's head anyway._

_The second time that Sherlock had disappeared unannounced, John merely awoke one morning to find the detective gone. John thought nothing of it until he sat down in his chair, tea in hand, and saw the shopping bag sitting on Sherlock's chair. He was planning on completely ignoring the bag – probably something for another one of Sherlock's bloody ridiculous experiments – until he noticed the piece of paper stuck to the outside of the bag._

_It was a list of items, written in John's handwriting – the shopping list John had spent the previous afternoon looking for, in fact. He had decided that they needed to restock the first-aid kit John kept under the kitchen sink as it had been nearly emptied after their last few cases. John had been making the list as he thought of items they might need and had wanted to compare it to the remainder of their kit when the list had disappeared._

_The shopping bag appeared to contain everything that John had put on the list, with numerous quantities of each item, in fact. John could think of no reason why Sherlock would have bought them, especially when he knew that John was already planning to. For God's sake, the man couldn't even buy his own milk when he ran out (although he had gone and bought milk when John was going through a bad breakup, a gesture the doctor hadn't missed).Yet, John had no doubts that it had been Sherlock._

_John retrieved his phone, wanting to discover what Sherlock's ulterior motive was. When he dialled Sherlock, the other man's phone began to ring from beneath the shopping bag. The only time Sherlock left his phone behind was when it was too dangerous to take it with him, like the last time he had mysteriously disappeared, or when he hadn't been given a chance to retrieve it before being forced to leave._

_John hoped that it was the former situation, rather than the latter, but he had no way of knowing as Sherlock had once again refused to leave him a message. Or had he?_

_The bag of shopping was just unusual enough for John to notice, yet no one else who came to the flat would consider it out of place amongst the rest of Sherlock's mess. It was a message meant just for John. It seemed that, for once, Sherlock had actually listened to him._

_When Sherlock returned several days later, he was pleased that John had understood his message._

_The third time Sherlock disappeared, he left a new sweater folded on John's chair after their previous case had ruined yet another of the doctor's sweaters. John smiled when he found it, understanding the message straight away. It became something of a routine after that._

John dragged his hand across his face, sighing. He couldn't stay here, couldn't bear to be in Baker Street when he knew that Sherlock wasn't coming back. He stood, taking one last glance around the room as he told himself that this would be the last time he ever saw the place.

He caught sight of the coat as he readied himself to leave. It wasn't one of Sherlock's coats, he could tell that just by looking at it. It was shorter, more practical. It was John's sort of coat, rather than Sherlock's. He was also sure that it hadn't been there the last time he had been in the flat.

John lifted the coat from where it had been hung beside one of Sherlock's. He wasn't surprised to find that the coat was his size. He had mentioned to Sherlock a few days before – he still couldn't bear to think of what had happened in any exact terms – that he needed to buy a new coat because his was getting a bit thin. And Sherlock, being Sherlock, was observant enough to know exactly what size coat he wore.

John slipped the coat on as he left the apartment, a small smile on his face. One more miracle, that was all he had asked for. For once, it seemed that Sherlock had listened to him.


End file.
